President Biden has said Donald Trump is “willing to sacrifice our democracy” to put himself in power again – as he spoke three years on from the Capitol riots.
Mr Trump is currently favourite to be his rival once again in November’s presidential election.
And Mr Biden launched an extended attack on his ambitions and motivations – and repeatedly referenced the 6 January riot when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building.
The president said the election would be a fight for the country’s soul and “all about whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause”.
“We must be clear. Democracy is on the ballot,” he said.
He painted Mr Trump’s re-election campaign as a backward-looking ego-trip and “all about him, not America”.
The Capitol riots in 2021 saw Trump supporters run amok amid false claims that the election had been “stolen”.
Mr Biden called it one of the “worst derelictions by a president in US history” because Mr Trump did not intervene to end the chaos.
“He told the crowd to fight like hell. And all hell was unleashed,” Mr Biden told supporters in Pennsylvania.
“Then as usual he left the dirty work to others. He retreated to the White House.”
The ex-president is promising “revenge and retribution” if elected again and his campaign has glorified the riots, added Mr Biden.
